After I was diagnosed in December 2005, I wasn't specifically trying to lose weight, but I was trying hard to keep my glucose levels within the targets my doctor had set. I had to change what I ate to do it, but it had the added benefit of causing me to drop pounds, all without my feeling deprived. This is what worked for me.
With some experimentation (and after more than a little denial), I realized that for me the answer to glucose control was that my 50% of my plate for lunch and dinner really did have to consist of non-starchy vegetables. I eat some starches at every meal, as well as some protein, but the focus is on those darned veggies. Often I eat them raw. I'm not a huge fan of iceberg lettuce (really, how boring can a food get?), so when I eat raw veggies, it's usually a mix of some selection of chopped carrots, celery, peppers (all different colors), mushrooms (different types), cucumbers, tomatoes, asparagus, broccoli, radishes, califlower, olives, avocados, spinach, cabbage, endives, zuchinni, snow or snap peas, bean sprouts, brussels sprouts, onions, green beans, and whatever else I can find. I don't eat all of these things every day, of course, but I find it helps to keep ziplock bags of a few different kinds of pre-chopped veggies in the fridge to keep me from making excuses not to eat them. I just grab two or three different bags each night, grab a handful of whatever is in them, and half my evening meal is already prepared. (Sweet peas, corn, beans and potatoes are starches and must be accounted for separately. They fall into the same category as pasta, rice, bread, or other grains in my book.)
When I get a little tired of raw veggies, I steam them or, with sturdier veggies, bake them, which is turning out to be one of my favorite ways to have them. Sprinkle them with olive oil, bake them at 375 for 30 minutes, and there you go. You can also prepare mashes. Whatever you do, you will almost certainly lose weight and gain better control over your blood sugars if you are religious about making sure that half of your plate is loaded with veggies.
The rest, I found, flowed from there. I can't eat fast food, not because I don't like it (heck, I worked in several fast food restaurants when I was younger and never grew tired of it), but because I can't handle the carbs in the buns and the fries. After my diagnosis, I checked out what the nutrional content of most fast food meals is, and I thought it was pretty shocking. See for yourself at
http://www.nutritiondata.com/index.html. My cholesterol is on target (well under target, in fact), so I don't get freaked out by the occasional high fat meal. But when you get used to eating lower fat, low sodium, lower carbohydrate meals, looking at what even the smallest meal at a fast food restaurant offers is almost like looking at an accident on the highway.
Sugar-free Jello is good as a dessert, but another idea is to end a meal with a few nuts. For some reason, 4-6 almonds signal to me that my meal is over. Almonds have some fat (but it's the "good" fat), but they do curb my appetite for other foods. I think it's probably a good idea to wean yourself from sweets as much as possible, but that may be easy for me to say because dessert was never much part of my diet anyway.
That, by the way, might be a big revelation -- at least it was for me. Not the dessert part (lots of people like them), but the idea of looking at what other people eat for lunch or dinner. Since I was diagnosed, I've been pretty aware of what everyone around me eats. It's been surprising to me sometimes how small the portions are that many folks naturally select, and how nutritious the foods are. It can be done, though I honestly didn't notice this before.
